Data associated with geographic areas along a route is useful to vehicle operators traveling the route. Such data may include weather/meteorological data, aeronautical information, navigation data, road conditions data, train-track conditions data, waterway information, traffic information, or the like. Decisions regarding delays, detours, and other variations in travel are more effectively made with the appropriate information available.
An aircraft is one exemplary embodiment of a vehicle that may rely on decision-making data during travel. In this embodiment, data may be transmitted to the aircraft via broadcast to a group of aircraft within a communication area, or via a manually requested transmission to a single aircraft. Both methods of communication transmit data for an entire travel route, resulting in a large data transmission. When the travel route is partially complete, a subset of the data associated with an already-traveled portion of the route is irrelevant to current travel, rendering the large data transmission partially unnecessary. Additionally, both methods of data transfer may be slow and/or expensive, and manually requesting data during travel may be inconvenient and challenging for a flight crew member during flight.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a method for obtaining the right amount of data at a vehicle at an appropriate time during travel. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.